Fi vs Tmobile...questions!

[Shadnic]

I plan on getting the next nexus device and I've been interested in Fi since it was announced. I love the idea of having access to both tmobile and sprint because while Tmobile generally has great and really fast coverage in my area, there are times when inside buildings or out on the perimeters of cities that I notice that Sprint gets better reception. Almost any time I go indoors my tmobile connection becomes much spottier.

That said, I have a great plan on tmobile, $42 (after taxes) for 3gb data with rollover. On project Fi I'd pay $50 for the same thing (before taxes). However I only usually use 1.5gb of data per month, so on fi I should be paying less than $40 most months.

My questions are:

1) Wifi calling on Fi.....on tmobile it's questionable at best. My phone will drop calls because it'll decide to randomly switch to cellular data for no reason in the middle of a call, if I'm in a weak wifi zone it'll still try to make calls and just fail miserably. Is this better on Fi?

2) Wifi...texting. Will MMS go through on Wifi? Because on tmobile I have to turn off my wifi to send or receive an MMS and then turn it back on again. It's a real pain.

3) When you're on tmobile bands, do you get free music streaming? I never used to stream much music but I use google music just about every day at the gym now and I kind of like that it doesn't count against my data.

4) Tmobile texting in planes w/gogo wifi. Any idea if that works on Fi?

5) Does the general switching from tmobile-sprint-wifi cause any instability or is it a smooth experience?

 

[g808]

1. No issues so far for me
2. Yes, will work on WiFi
3. I doubt it
4. No idea
5. Seems like YMMV based on feedback I've read in the Fi G+ community. I haven't had issues thus far.

Sent from my C6806 using Tapatalk

 

[AlexMadarasz]

I plan on getting the next nexus device and I've been interested in Fi since it was announced. ...

Only thing I would say is ... I haven't seen anything from the Fi folks saying that they will definitely support the next Nexus / Nexii (or whatever the plural is) - they HAVE made it clear that during the current "beta" period the Nexus 6 is the only phone they're supporting, and there have been no official announcements that I know of about whether/when they will support any other phones. And since they're still working out some pretty serious issues, complicating their development and test environment to add support for more phones may not be in their plans for a while ....

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Alex

 

[Shadnic]

Only thing I would say is ... I haven't seen anything from the Fi folks saying that they will definitely support the next Nexus / Nexii (or whatever the plural is) - they HAVE made it clear that during the current "beta" period the Nexus 6 is the only phone they're supporting, and there have been no official announcements that I know of about whether/when they will support any other phones. And since they're still working out some pretty serious issues, complicating their development and test environment to add support for more phones may not be in their plans for a while ....

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Alex

That is true, but I think it's at least safe to say that the next nexii devices will be built with the capabilities to run on Fi....as if they weren't then google would be dooming it's own project. But I imagine part of getting the network up and running means getting as many people to try it as they can, and the Nexus community is probably the best they can ask for. Not as many people jumped on the nexus 6 as past nexus devices so I hope they'll extend access I have an invite waiting around so as soon as it is available I'd like to jump in.

 

[AlexMadarasz]

That is true, but I think it's at least safe to say that the next nexii devices will be built with the capabilities to run on Fi....as if they weren't then google would be dooming it's own project. But I imagine part of getting the network up and running means getting as many people to try it as they can, and the Nexus community is probably the best they can ask for. Not as many people jumped on the nexus 6 as past nexus devices so I hope they'll extend access I have an invite waiting around so as soon as it is available I'd like to jump in.

FYI, they have a poll right now in the official Project Fi Google + community asking:

"Project Fi Pulse #2: Interested in other Project Fi devices? ... We’re interested in finding out if you’d be interested in other Project Fi devices, other than your Nexus 6."​

So they heard the clamor from some of us asking them to support phones other than the N6. Of course some folks said they were interested in the 2015 Nexus 5 whatever(s), but they were also asking whether we financed the N6 and whether we'd be interested in financing another device.

I told them in no uncertain terms that if the 2015 Moto X Pure Edition / Style was supported I would order it on September 3rd and finance it just like I'm financing the N6 (through Motorola). I stopped worrying about "the next Nexus" after I had bad experiences with the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 radios and my very marginal T-Mobile signal around my house (which is why I want Fi to work). I have a Moto X 2014 just sitting around, but I really want the Moto X usability and I can't imagine using any device that has radios worse than Motorolas (which is why I'm not particularly interested in an LG or Huawei 2015 Nexus 5).

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Alex

 

[Shadnic]

I stopped worrying about "the next Nexus" after I had bad experiences with the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 radios and my very marginal T-Mobile signal around my house (which is why I want Fi to work).

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Alex

This is exactly why I want Fi to work. I had a Nexus 5 and loved everything about it. My favorite phone I'd ever had. Except it just could not get a tmobile signal inside my house (or my old work building). The second I walked inside, boom, no signal. And since there was no support for wifi calling on the nexus 5, my phone was unable to get texts or calls. I'd have to set in the window and maybe get enough bars to get a text or two every few hours. It was awful.

Got a used HTC One M8, supports wifi calling/texting, but wifi calling has just been awful on tmobile so far. My phone will randomly drop the call, it'll switch to cellular in the middle of the call for no reason, it won't send MMS so I have to constantly switch back and forth, etc. My One M8 does actually get much better signal inside my house, but still not super reliable.

I have a free freedompop phone that gets sprint LTE and it shows full bars inside my apartment, so my hope is that getting Fi will let me use my phone inside without having to rely on tmobile's wifi calling/texting.

 

[AlexMadarasz]

This is exactly why I want Fi to work. ... I have a free freedompop phone that gets sprint LTE and it shows full bars inside my apartment, so my hope is that getting Fi will let me use my phone inside without having to rely on tmobile's wifi calling/texting.

I will say that [currently on Fi] having a good Sprint LTE signal at home can be a mixed blessing - it's good to know you can get a cell signal from Sprint if you need it, but Sprint is apparently notorious for call connectivity issues, and it's showing up for me with Fi - if I'm on my home WiFi AND I have a Sprint signal then incoming calls frequently/usually don't ring on my Nexus 6. So I do the current Fi workaround and turn Airplane mode on (to prevent the N6 from connecting to Sprint) and then turn WiFi back on (so all Fi services can only come over WiFi). It's a real PITA when I leave the house and forget to turn Airplane mode off, but it's good enough for now.

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Alex

 

[Shadnic]

I will say that [currently on Fi] having a good Sprint LTE signal at home can be a mixed blessing - it's good to know you can get a cell signal from Sprint if you need it, but Sprint is apparently notorious for call connectivity issues, and it's showing up for me with Fi - if I'm on my home WiFi AND I have a Sprint signal then incoming calls frequently/usually don't ring on my Nexus 6. So I do the current Fi workaround and turn Airplane mode on (to prevent the N6 from connecting to Sprint) and then turn WiFi back on (so all Fi services can only come over WiFi). It's a real PITA when I leave the house and forget to turn Airplane mode off, but it's good enough for now.

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Alex

Wow, I was on Sprint two years ago and I remember running into issues very similar to that back then. I can't believe those are still going on....Project Fi will really choose to be on Sprint over your home wifi even if the wifi signal is much stronger??

And even if the phone doesn't ring....will hangouts on my computer ring if I have it open? I'm on my pc pretty much all the time so even if my phone doesn't ring, hangouts ringing when I'm at home will still get my attention.

 

[AlexMadarasz]

Wow, I was on Sprint two years ago and I remember running into issues very similar to that back then. I can't believe those are still going on....Project Fi will really choose to be on Sprint over your home wifi even if the wifi signal is much stronger??

And even if the phone doesn't ring....will hangouts on my computer ring if I have it open? I'm on my pc pretty much all the time so even if my phone doesn't ring, hangouts ringing when I'm at home will still get my attention.

Yeah, until Fi tunes/fixes their network selection algorithms, it's still biased to the cell network even if you have a strong WiFi connection. I can understand it to some extent, considering that Google is trying to "commercialize" a new WiFi calling feature that Google considers to be in beta test - if you have a cell connection, you SHOULD be able to presume that the cell network knows what it's doing as far as call signaling and setup compared to the new/beta Google WiFi calling features, so you SHOULD be able to rely on the cell network's call setup to route incoming calls to your phone so your phone can ring. But that's not happening [reliably] with Sprint and Fi right now.

Yes, if you have Hangouts on a computer then it will ring. In fact, that was my first indication that Fi had some call signaling issues ... Shortly after I activated Fi, while I had the Hangouts plugin installed in Chrome on my PC, Hangouts started ringing but my phone didn't. The problem isn't that Hangouts doesn't ring, it's that your phone isn't ringing because there is no incoming call routed to your phone at all - so you can't use Hangouts ringing as a cue to go pick up the call on your phone, you'd have to answer the call in Hangouts (which I can't do anyway - Hangouts rings on my PC, but I don't have a Web cam or even a mic connected to the PC). So now, I have no Hangouts on my PC and my phone stays in Airplane mode while I'm at home.

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Alex